Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned
rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful
of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has
come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the
Reyes’ annual car trip—a caravan overflowing with children, laughter,
and quarrels—from Chicago to “the other side,” Mexico City. It is
there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the
truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation
to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the “Paris of the
New World” to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the
Roaring Twenties—and finally, to Lala’s own difficult adolescence in
the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas.
Caramelo
is a vital, wise, romantic tale of homelands, sometimes real, sometimes
imagined. Vivid, funny, intimate, historical, it is a brilliant work
destined to become a classic: a major new novel from one of our
country’s most beloved storytellers.
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“Like Eduardo Galeano, John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, Cisneros writes along the borders where the novel and social history intersect. In this lovingly told and poetic novel, she uses the storytelling art to give the voiceless ones a voice, and to find the border to the past, imbuing the struggles of her family and her countries with the richness of myth.”
—
Los Angeles Times